MY LITTLE GIRL* LET it be understood at once, that

with all its faults, and everything to the contrary notwithstanding, we unhesitatingly recommend this charming little book. It is by turns fantastic, improbable, sentimental, occasionally insipid, too often even dis- agreeable, and yet it is undeniably interesting. But that is not its only, nor nearly its greatest charm ; it abounds in quaint humour, in beautiful little tender passages, and in exquisite bits of description. The title-page admits a dual authorship, and if we may venture to have a theory about it, it would be that a good and amiable woman with a fluent pen has filled up the somewhat

• My Little Girl. By the Authors of " Ready-Money Idortiboy." London Tinsley Brothers.

sentimental and insipid parts, and has taken Marie and Madeleine in hand, while some masculine hand, not unlike that of Venn him- self, has described this gentleman and his little girl, and written the fantastic lucubrations of the Chorus, and the more painful and disagreeable particulars of those miscreants Philip and Mac- Intyre. And in looking over the passages that have most struck us by originality, beauty, or humour, our theory seems to be borne out, as we find that very few of them are in the chapters which we have assigned to the lady. (We have too often in this paper praised highly for power as well as beauty the works of women, to be afraid that we shall be understood to think lightly of them as a rule.) On the other hand, the man seems to us responsible for the main defects as well as entitled to our gratitude for the beauties of the book. Amongst the former, we place the somewhat incongruous and inharmonious mixture of simple moral teaching and philosophical satire, of narrative and allegory ; the troubles of humanity are first recorded in a manner that goes to our hearts, and then laughed at with a good-humoured and quaint cynicism. Not that we would part with the satire, though we could dispense with the visions in which the allegory is conveyed :—only that they do not go well together, the narrative being too much broken in upon, and the authors destroying the effect of their own work by seeming to invite you to laugh at it. There is a society called a Chorus, of which the hero is chief, the essential qualification for enrolment in which shall be unsucceas ; if a man succeeds, he is ignominiously expelled. Apropos of thisunsuccess, we may quote a passage which men of position and wealth who contri- bute to our periodical literature are intended to take to heart, on behalf of poor and struggling genius:—

" Poverty has its rights as well as its duties; and among these is a prescriptive law—often enough violated—that the rich should keep out of the battle. Remember this, if you please, Messieurs the Arch- bishops. Prime and other ministers, Deans and dignitaries; and next time you condescend to forward your invaluable, if prosy, contributions to current literature, reflect that they are taken—and would be taken, if they were bad enough to corrupt the taste of a whole generation—for the name that they bear. Then, be humble; or, better still, don't send the rubbish at all—I mean the words of wisdom—and let some poor penny-a-liner get the guineas."

The assumption that the great write " rubbish" may be some- times true and sometimes not ; but surely it is only fair to think of the readers, and, as far as we know, even rubbish, if duly signed by the great, is apt to interest the reading public more keenly than far better essays by unknown hands.

The idea of this Chorus is excellent, and the execution often amus- ing, but its meetings, and its discussions, and papers, and visions are often annoying interruptions to the tale, of which they form no part—only one member being bound up in its plot—and the sort of lightheadedness exhibited by its president, as by the other members, seems to detract from the dignity, simplicity, and interest of his position as hero of the story. Another objection we have to make is the space devoted to that most uninteresting and most dis- agreeable, and to a majority of readers probably incomprehensible subject, horse-racing and betting, and to the kindred subjects of gambling, drinking, and the other slopes to Avernus. But this is a matter of taste ; our third objection, like the first, affects the character of the book as a work of art. It is the impossibility of the incidents. We do not mean merely the transfer of a large estate on the word of a wretch like Maclntyre, or the machinery by which he accomplished his robberies and for- geries; or the storms, shipwreck, omens, &c. ; or the wandering about in November rain of the poor heroine, when she would evi- dently have gone straight to her guardian, or her always just miss- ing him, and then, when another hour would have made it too late, being found by almost the only person who knew her by sight; or the wonderful fortune amassed by the planter's quadroon mistress, who went to Europe and educated herself for the operatic stage with a wisdom, and calmness, and dignity, and virtue which are not, we should say, otherwise than exceptional on the part of a very young, passionate, uneducated slave-girl of the tropics; or many other improbabilities of incident and inconsistencies of character,—we mean the simple impossi- bility of a girl growing up to womanhood in the constant companionship of a refined and good man, with the advantages of a very unusually high and complete education, with access, if not to novels, to the best literature of past and present times, both of this and other countries—including, certainly, the poets, and probably biography—and yet without the remotest conception of the meaning of love and marriage ; quite perfect, and yet without the natural shyness that nature, without asking the aid of knowledge, teaches ; sensible and thoughtful far beyond the sense and thoughtfulness of her age and sex, and yet separat-

ing herself from her only friend and guardian, and accepting a perfect stranger without hesitation, to please her guardian,—as a child makes a kettle-holder as a surprise for her papa,—because she had heard him say that he should like her to be happily married. This is too absurd ! Too absurd, also, that she should believe in a marriage in a lodging-house parlour, with no witnesses, and by a tipsy Scotchman, and too ridiculous that she should never have seen a Bible nor been inside a church. But we have to swallow all this, and make the best of it, and having done so, we are free to admire the delightful creation of these imagina- tive authors' fancies. For Laura is certainly very sweet and attractive, and her utter guilelessness and simplicity, if not very natural, are at least very captivating. As we read of the quiet days in Mr. Venn's old-fashioned chambers in Gray's Inn, where the two communed and read together, where the grown-up man jealously guarded his treasure, wondering what he should do with it, and the sweet, unconscious maiden drank in all his thoughts and opinions, and dreamed of no higher wisdom or deeper love, we are reminded of Wordsworth's beautiful and often quoted poem, and think that Mr. Venn must have thought of it too, and been enacting the " Nature " who took the child Lucy to herself. The stronger becomes our feeling that they are made and meant for each other, the greater is our indignation with Venn for letting her slip from his guardianship, and with our authors for so gratuitously, preposterously, and without even a pretence of a reason, making him, over and over again, refuse to let her tell her secret. Nevertheless Venn and Laura are as delightful as are the descriptions of them. Madeleine, Marie, and Arthur are good and nice, but tame ; and Philip and MacIntyre are clever, but overdrawn. It is difficult to conceive of such an unprincipled rascal as the Scotch tutor. Our authors must have a grudge against the Scotch, and be paying it off by this picture of an utterly detestable individual of that race ; and it is still more difficult to believe that Philip, with some nobility of disposition, even at first could have endured, and actually courted, the society of not merely a patent and ingrained rogue, but a low-lived, beastly sot. The other characters are nothing ; and indeed the charm of the book lies in the contemplation of Mr. Venn and Laura, and in the many little passages of which we spoke at the beginning of this notice. We must content ourselves with only a few of these, and must leave unnoticed the opinions on various subjects which are incidentally thrown out, with many of which— especially those on woman's mission—we heartily agree.

Here is the aesthetic, slightly epicurean Mr. Venn's first experi- ence of early morning hours :—

" At four he was awakened, and got up. ' Most extraordinary,' he murmured, shivering and lighting a candle, the sensation of rising, in the night. I quite understand now why the labouring classes, who always do it, never take tubs.' He dressed hastily, and went out into the court. The very last light had disappeared in the square. The last roysterer had gone to bed. The last student had knocked off work for the night. ' It gives one,' he said to himself, ' an Antipodean feeling. I feel as if I were on my head. Now I begin to understand why agricultural labourers are never boisterous in their spirits. This is enough to sadden Momus V Not a soul was in Holborn when he passed through the gate. Ho buttoned his great-coat tighter across his chest, and strode up the street, his footsteps echoing as he went. ' I wish it would rain,' he said, 'then I should understand the misery of it better.' He left Holborn, and passing down the bye-streets, made directly for Covent Garden. There he found the market in full vigour— the carts all seeming to come in at the same time. He peered about in the faces of the drivers and workmen_ ' An expression of hope,' he said, ' or rather of expectation. We have had our bed—they seem as if they were always looking for it. Very odd ! Life pulled forward—break- fast at four, dinner at ten, tea at two. Bed, if you are a Sybarite, about seven ; if you are a reveller, at nine.' It was not quite six o'clock. He strolled along the streets, making mental observations, watching how the traffic began and how it slowly increased. Then he went on the Embankment. I have never yet seen the rosy-fingered dawn. Let us contemplate one of nature's grandest phenomena.' A dense fog came rolling up with the break of day, and there was nothing to see at all. ' I am disappointed,' he said to himself. 'From the description of that lying tribe, the poets, I had expected a very differ- ent thing. Alas! one by one the illusions of life die away. Lot us go and look after our patient.' " And here is a passage of a different kind, tender and thoughtful, instead of humorous and observant :— " They sat and talked together, hand in hand, of the life that they would lead, of the perfect confidence there should be between them, of all high and sweet things that a man can only tell to a woman. Young fellows whisper to each other something of thoir inner life—it can only be done between eighteen and twenty-two—and ever after there is a bond of union between them that is always felt, if not acknowledged. Sometimes, too, at night, on the deck of a ship, when the moonlight is broken into ten thousand fragments in the white track, and the stars are gazing solemnly at us with their wide and pitying eyes, men may lay bare the secrets of their soul. One of the many whom I have known—he is ten thousand miles from here—in my wander- ings abroad—I spent six months beneath the same roof with him—was wont to rise at dead of night, and pace the verandah for an hour or two. If you heard him, and got up to join him, he would talk to you. The memory of his talk is with me still. I remembered it in the morning, but ho did not. Which was the real man, which was tho false, I never knew. One lived by day, and one by night. I think the man of the night—he who showed me his thoughts—was the true man. He is the one whom I love to recall."

Here is a summer morning in Normandy :— " Do you know the coast of Normandy ? It is a country that every- body thinks he knows well. We have all been to Dieppe, some even to Havre. Dear friends, this is really not enough. What you do not know is the existence of a dozen little watering-places between Havre and Boulogne, all charming, all quiet, all entirely French. These secluded retreats are like the triangles in the sixth book of Euclid's immortal work—they are all similar, and similarly situated. Where the sea runs in and makes a bay, where a river runs down and mingles the fresh with the salt, where the cliffs on either side stoop to the earth and disappear in space, there lies the littl4shing town. What it must be like in winter, imagination vainly endeavours to realize ; but in summer, between June and October, there are no pleasanter places for quiet folk to stay in. Right and left, the cliffs rise to a height of some hundreds of feet. You climb them in the morning after your coffee and brioche, and stride away in the fresh upland air, with the grass under your feet and the woods behind. As you go along, you see the girls milking the sleepy- eyed Norman cows, you salute the women going to market with their baskets, you listen to the lark, you watch the blue sea far away beyond, with perhaps a little fleet of fishing boats."

And here the same on a solitary plantation in a West Indian island ; but first the night :- " The dogs began by barking against each other, but gradually grew sleepy and left off. The cocks, who disregard all times and seasons in Palmiste Island, loudly called for the sun about midnight. As he declined to appear at their bidding, they tucked their heads in again, and had another nap. And than the silence of the forest seemed to make itself felt ; and Marie, her old superstitions coming back in all

their force, almost gasped with the tension of her nerves and went out into the open air to pace the verandah, and look upon the old familiar scene bathed in the silver moonlight Leaving him sleeping, she went out again to the verandah, and watched the coming dawn. The moon was down by this time and save the Southern Cross. paling before the coming day, all the stars were gone. Only the bright morning star was left in the east. The birds began to twitter in the trees, just in their dreams—as she remembered long ago—before the dawn ; and the sweet words of the poet came into her mind :—

.Ah ! sad and strange, as in dark summer dawns

- The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square : so sad, so strange, the days that are no more.'

And she was sitting with the memories of bygone days ; with her dying son in his last sleep—save the longest—while this gray summer dawn crept slowly up the east. Slowly ; but it came. First a dull gray, and presently a silver gray ; and then those long, marvellous fingers of light which spread themselves out upon the world as though they would fain seize it, and make it their own. And then the rocks, which had been black, grew purple ; the mist upon the nearest peak, which had been a cloud, became a bridal veil, drawn loosely round, and falling in a thousand folds upon the woods below. And then a few short minutes of bright green, and rod, and gold, and the great sun bounded into the sky with a single leap, and another day was born to the world. And then the birds all flew about to greet the sun ; from the woods chattered the monkeys ; the lizards woke up, and began to hunt about for the hottest places, blinking at the light ; the dogs from the camp resumed their musical contest in Amcebasan strains, just where they had left it off on the previous night; the cocks began to crow, and make a great triumph, as if they had compelled the sun to come back by their own personal efforts; the turkeys began to strut about with a great babbling and cackle ; the mules came out and rolled in the cane straw ; the mosquitoes all went away to bed ; and the women's voices began, in the way she knew so well—the women always seemed to waken first—to rail at their lords from the huts of the camp. Her own two companions of the night shook themselves together, and greeted her kindly. She set them to make some tea. and sat with her hands crossed, looking before her at the bright and hopeful morning."

The humour is dotted about in single remarks, sometimes a word or two, sometimes a line or two, and it would be unfair to rob the book of them only because they would not take up much room here, nor if we did cull them, would they be justly appreciated without the context. It is seldom we find a whole passage as amusing as the first chapter, but one like the following is not so rare. Mr. Venn wants to take his little girl to the sea, and for propriety's sake, to seduce his staid old sister to accompany them She had given up all ideas of matrimony, and chiefly occupied her- self with her different curates—because she could never quite make up her mind between Low and High Church—and with little things to eat. Hartley used to go and see her once in three months or so, every now and then asking her to come and breakfast with him. On these oc- casions he would provide kidneys= to keep up the family tie,' he used to say. Sukey received him with her usual cordiality, and the bell for Anne to come up and shake hands with him.= I am going to the seaside for threw weeks, Sukey,' said he ; and I want you to come with me.' 'It is for your sake, my dear Sukey,' he said, persuasively—' for your sake entirely. Far away from Anne, from your—your pill-box and your little comforts, suppose you were taken ill? So Lollie is to go with us to look after yen, and be your com- panion in hours of solitude.' Sukey fairly burst out laughing.—' My hours of solitude, indeed! Hartley, you are the greatest humbug I ever knew. I am to go with you because you want the child taught to be a_ lady. Oh, don't tell me. A lady, indood—the daughter of a

laundress.'—• Pardon me, dear Sukey. Her grandmamma occupies that position. Her father was a gentleman. Our grandfather, my sister—' =Was a bishop, Hartley. Don't forget that, if you please.'—' We had two, dear. It may be uncommon, but such is the fact. In our family we had two grandfathers. One of them was, if I may remind you, not wholly unconnected with the wholesale glue and—'—' Don't be provoking!'"